talking about them, which is the present approved fashion of evolving fiction. Why, what time have the good people in "Quentin Durward" for speculation and chatter? The rush of events carries them irresistibly into action. They plot, and fight, and run away, and scour the country, and meet with so many adventures, and perform so many brave and cruel deeds, that they have no chance for introspection and the joys of analysis. Naturally, those writers who pride themselves upon making a story out of nothing, and who are more concerned with excluding material than with telling their tales, have scant liking for Sir Walter, who thought little and prated not at all about the "art of fiction," but used the subjects which came to hand with the instinctive and unhesitating skill of a great artist. The battles in "Quentin Durward" and "Old Mortality" are, I think, as fine in their way as the battle of Flodden; and Flodden, says Mr. Lang, is the finest fight on record,—"better even than the stand of Aias by the ships in the Iliad, better than the slaying of the Wooers in the Odyssey."
The ability to carry us whither he would, to
